快猫短视频

The first ball games in Eurasia may have been played 3000 years ago, according to a new analysis of three leather balls unearthed in an ancient cemetery in northern China. One of the men buried with a leather ball also sported the world鈥檚 earliest known pair of trousers, which he may have worn while playing.

The Yanghai cemetery, which contains more than 500 graves, was in use between about 3200 and 1850 years ago. Archaeologists working there a few years ago uncovered three leather balls from three separate graves. The balls, each about 9 centimetres in diameter, had been stuffed with either leather strips or with wool and hair. Two of them had a red cross painted on one side.

According to initial estimates, the leather balls were between 2800 and 2400 years old, making them the earliest known balls in Eurasia. The world鈥檚 oldest known ball is 4500 years old and was found in a child鈥檚 tomb in Egypt.

But now a team of archaeologists, including Patrick Wertmann at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, has carbon-dated the wool stuffing of one ball and concluded it is really between 3210 and 2930 years old. The researchers also carbon-dated artefacts from the graves that yielded the other two balls. They fell within the same range, suggesting all three balls are around 3000 years old.

Exactly how the balls were used isn鈥檛 clear. The archaeologists who unearthed them also found 10 curved wooden sticks in the cemetery, similar to those used to play polo, a game for horseback riders.

The men buried with the balls do seem to have ridden horses, say Wertmann and his colleagues: two had whips in their graves, and the trousers that one of them was wearing had a wide crotch that would make straddling a horse comfortable.

Yet Wertmann and his colleagues point out that all of the 鈥榩olo鈥� sticks came from much younger graves than those containing the leather balls. This means we can鈥檛 be sure exactly what the balls were for, although Wertmann suspects they were used in some sort of sport 鈥� played perhaps for exercise, for fun or as part of military training.

It is even possible that the three individuals buried with balls were skilled players, particularly given that the person buried wearing the world鈥檚 oldest trousers also wore other garments 鈥� including a pair of red leather boots with bronze buttons 鈥� that suggest he had a special status.

鈥淧erhaps he was a great ball-player who should be remembered after his death,鈥� says Wertmann.